


The Final Mystery

by Mr_Bultitude



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, Retirement, What's it all about anyway?, philosophical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Bultitude/pseuds/Mr_Bultitude
Summary: Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and the rest of the supporting cast of the great Rex Stout's mysteries live in a golden era where time passes slowly, if at all, leaving them untouched by its ravages.  I've often wondered what would happen if time caught up to them.  Here is one possible outcome.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	The Final Mystery

They buried Horstmann today. He died in his sleep last week, his wife next to him. Supposedly didn’t feel a thing. Which makes it official; I’m the last one. 

His funeral wasn’t big, just the wife and kids, and a few of the old orchid-men. I wasn’t invited, but that suited me fine since I never liked him and the feeling was mutual. It always surprised me that he was able to find a woman that would take him, but you can never tell. After Wolfe passed…but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The big guy was not the first to go, that was Orrie, but you already know all of that. It was Orrie that screwed everything up. The mess he left behind was more than a body blown to bits along with a good chunk of the front of the brownstone. After that, things changed. Wolfe trusted few enough people to begin with, but after the explosion, he didn’t trust anyone; not Fritz, not me. 

He still took cases for a while, sure, he was too stubborn not to and he needed the income. But then Fred bought it about two years after Orrie. The irony was It had nothing to do with the case we were working. Fred was on a tail in Brooklyn when he saw some punk snatch a purse. He chased the punk down, but the kid had a knife. It was pure dumb bad luck. Fred got it in the gut and bled out before they could get him to a hospital. The kid got his for second degree murder, but that didn’t do Fred any good. Or Wolfe. I never could tell if he just refused to put anyone else in harm’s way again, but that was the last case he took that he could not manage from the brownstone. He never sent me out again. 

So I hung my shingle out, just like a few years before when he disappeared and left us all hanging. Business was good and I kept money coming in but he refused to touch it. He turned to investing and did ok for all I knew. I kept the books, but never had a head for that type of math. However he did it, it was enough to keep Fritz employed, the orchid rooms full, and the house in good shape. He refused to discuss anything I was working on. 

With Wolfe out of the game, Cramer stopped coming by. He tried a couple of times to bring Wolfe out of his shell when he needed a hand. The first time, Wolfe was polite. He offered Cramer a beer and investment advice, even a hint on what to look for in that case, which, by the way, helped Cramer bust it, but that was it. The second time, he wouldn’t let me open the door. I stepped out and offered my services, such as they were. Cramer looked up at me, eyes burning and jaws clamped on his cigar. I couldn’t blame him. He’d hiked all the way to 35th avenue to grovel and couldn’t even get in the door. It wasn’t the first time the door was closed to him, but it was never closed when he really needed the help. 

Cramer ground the cigar between his teeth, looking for just the right insult while I waited. When he thought he had it, he pulled the cigar out, pointed at me, then stopped dead in his tracks and just stared at me for a second. He replaced the cigar, walked up the steps, and offered his hand. We shook for the first and only time in our long acquaintance. Then he turned, walked back down the steps to his car and drove off. Cramer retired later that year and was celebrated as one of the best homicide dicks the city had known. Wolfe sent him a rare orchid that was immediately returned. When Cramer died of a stroke a few years later, Wolfe sent another one to his widow that was not returned.

In the meantime, business went on pretty well. Wolfe read most of the time, checking on his accounts when he had to. Saul and I worked together now and then. He was too good an operative to not be busy. He was also too good to not know when it was time to get out of the game. One day he just packed his things and headed to Florida. He’d made a large packet and wanted to enjoy it while there was something left to enjoy. We got a postcard once in a while from the Keys where he bought a boat and spent most of his time fishing. I wouldn’t have guessed that was his thing, but he sounded happy and I wished him all the best. When the cards stopped, I checked with the local papers and found an obituary that said he was killed in a boating accident. This time, there was no one to send an orchid to. 

Unlike Saul, I didn’t have the good sense to know when to get out. I was busy enough that I barely noticed things changing around me. Not until I got the card from Lily the same day the announcement was published in the Gazette. The card was simple enough. It said “I waited as long as I could, Escamillo. Don’t come. Lily.” The announcement made the lower half of the front page: “Long Time Most Eligible Bachelorette to Marry.” She and a well known Wall Street type from an old money family were engaged to be wed in June. It would be a small wedding with only family in attendance. I didn’t read further. Wolfe watched me closely all that week. He even asked about some of my cases during meals. I appreciated the effort and we talked shop over lunch for the first time in I don’t know how long. 

I tried to kid myself that it didn’t hurt. There were plenty of fish in the sea and they were just waiting for me to dance with them. I went out the night she married, but what I hadn’t noticed…who am I kidding…what I pretended not to notice is that the dance halls had changed. Hell, everything had changed. The music, the dancing, and the people dancing. I asked once or twice but was refused politely. Instead of embarrassing myself further, I went home and looked in the mirror, closely, and saw why. Lily had been the last partner I danced with. The others had gone and married and had families. After Lily, there was no one else. Anyway, she and her husband made the papers every once in a while, traveling around the world, contributing large sums to charities, they even adopted a bunch of poverty-stricken kids. “For of all sad words of tongue or pen…” or something like that.

Lily should have been a wakeup call, but my head was still too thick to get it. It finally sank in the morning that Wolfe failed to go to the orchid room at 9am. I didn’t see him at his desk after breakfast, but that had been going on for a while so I didn’t think anything of it until Theodore came in looking for Wolfe. I bolted upstairs to find him still in bed. He turned his massive head to me, frowning. He was pale and sweating profusely. “Confound it! I can’t get up! Call Vollmer.” This was alarming for two reasons. There was the obvious one, but the second was that Vollmer was retired and replaced by Doctor Richter.

I did as instructed and Doc Richter said he would be there as soon as he could, but that I should go ahead and call an ambulance. Richter got there almost at the same time as the medics. Wolfe protested loudly and flailed at them feebly with his right arm. They finally got him in the gurney and then the ambulance and it was a good thing. Heart attack. A small one, but serious. He spent the better part of three days in the hospital before we were allowed to bring him back. 

When he came back, he was different. Still stubborn, still eccentric, still a genius, but something was missing. He spent less time at his desk and more in the orchid rooms. He slept harder and longer. He was forced to eat and drink less and started losing weight. It was a few months after the attack that he said out loud at supper, “Archie, I am old. I’m going to die.” Simple, matter of fact, no self-pity, just that. He looked at me and I waited for more, but that was it. I had nothing to say. He went back to his meal and never mentioned it again. 

It might have been a week later that I was coming upstairs after breakfast when I heard him talking in his room. Instead of continuing on to my own room, I stepped down the hall and stopped outside his door. “Confound it. It can’t be true! No, it can’t be.” I looked in and he was still in his bed, the yellow silk pajamas hanging looser on him than in the past, a large book open in his hands. He slammed it shut and I stepped back so he couldn’t see me. I heard a thud as he tossed the book on the desk next to his bed and I went on to my room. It wasn’t the last time I would hear those words, or something like them, but I didn’t hear them for long. Another three months passed before the prophecy he spoke that one supper was fulfilled. 

Half the city seemed to turn out for his funeral even though he’d been out of the public eye for ages. He’d helped a lot of them. A lot more laid claim to his help even though they’d never been near 35th street. He left me the house and Fritz the kitchen, and divided the money evenly between us, which set us up for the rest of our lives. Theodore got half the orchids. The rest were distributed among a small number of enthusiasts. Theodore sold most of what he got and retired on the proceeds. 

For some time, Fritz was at a loss. He stayed in the kitchen cooking larger meals than we could eat on our own. It was never enough to fill the emptiness inside both of us that was bigger than I dreamed. He had offers from all over the city but for a long time he couldn’t bring himself to accept any. Eventually, he took a job as a managing chef to one of the Ten for Aristology who had a large family, but he refused to move from the house. 

By this time, there was no work for me. It had been drying up slowly for years. What friends I had in the business had long since retired. I’d made enough to take care of myself and, combined with what Wolfe left me, I was set. With Fritz employed elsewhere, I had to hire a cleaning lady and another cook. Fritz was hurt by the latter, but he understood, even if he hated sharing a kitchen, especially with a woman. She was no Fritz, but no slouch either. I ate well, even if I ate alone.

It's been almost twenty years now since Wolfe died. Fritz came down with a cold that turned into pneumonia two years ago and passed peacefully enough. Most days I sit at my desk and read, as I have for those two decades. Sometimes I go to the old plant rooms and look at a night sky that’s a lot brighter than when I was a kid. I’m no philosopher, but I can’t help asking what it was all for and what’s next. Of course I know what’s next, and it can’t be all that long, but what after that? Sure, we helped people, a lot of people over the years. And yeah, there was justice for most of them. But most of them are dead now, too, so what does any of it mean? Who’s going to remember when it’s my turn?

I went into Wolfe’s room for the first time in years last night. The cleaning lady keeps it tidy, just like the rest of the house. There was a book on the desk next to his bed, same one I saw in his hands that morning. I picked it up and thumbed through it, wondering what he saw that perplexed him. A ribbon marked a spot close to the middle and I caught a few words, “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” Was that it? Was he really reading this? Nah, I don’t believe it, can’t believe it. 

And that’s it. The house is bigger now than it used to be. The cleaners and the cook come and go and they’re nice when they’re here. I try to be nice back. The rest of the time I read and remember. But I can’t help but wonder. "Why will ye die?" Why indeed. Did Wolfe find his answer? If he did, he’s not telling.

Typical.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are welcome, but please keep it clean, civil, and courteous.


End file.
